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Jamie Oliver weighs in on Woolworths campaign being funded by growers

The Jamie Oliver Group responded to Ausveg’s plea for support by saying Oliver is concerned, but has no sway with the grocery retailer.

In a letter to Ausveg, the Jamie Oliver Group said “Jamie, naturally, is concerned when he hears about small producers suffering financial hardship and your letter will be discussed with Woolworths further at our next senior-level meeting to ensure farmers are completely clear about the aims of the program”.

“As I'm sure you know, Jamie is essentially an 'employee' of Woolworths and as such he has no sway regarding the commercial direction or negotiations that the Woolworths business takes”.

Ausveg Public Affairs Manager, William Churchill said “Ausveg is disappointed in the lacklustre response from the Jamie Oliver Group for not taking a stronger stand on the issue after AUSVEG exposed Woolworths last week who are levying farmers 40c a crate to pay for their new marketing campaign”.

“This is in stark contrast to the position Mr Oliver took in 2012 where he signed an open letter to The Times objecting to the price of milk. It’s sad that a similar stand has not been made here,” Churchill said. “Growers have seen this levy by Woolworths as a slap in the face and a double dip into their wallets and are rightfully outraged”.

“Woolworths are holding up one grower who has had to negotiate their payments for this ‘voluntary levy’ [and that] gives quite a strong indication that growers involvement is not because they are supportive of the campaign but because they don’t want to threaten their business with the supermarket giant”.

Last week (11 June), Ausveg wrote to Jamie Oliver, requesting that he ask the retailer to give refunds to the farmers who have contributed to the campaign.

 “We have no issue with Mr Oliver, but for Woolworths to ask hard working Australian growers to stump up this additional money is unreasonable, unfair and un-Australian,” Churchill said.

Reports emerged that Woolworths are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual growers around Australia to fund their new campaign on 6 June after Ausveg held a press conference with Independent South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon to call upon the ACCC to investigate the supermarket.

Ausveg alleges that the funding for the campaign is being collected in the form of a new 40c per crate charge on top of the 2.5 – 5 per cent fee growers are already required to pay Woolworths for them to market and promote their produce.

A statement from Woolworths maintains that the contributions were “entirely voluntary”.

"It’s disappointing that Senator Xenophon and Ausveg didn’t contact us," the statement read.

"We could have explained that the contribution was entirely voluntary, how around half our suppliers chose to work with us on the campaign which benefits the whole fruit and vegetable industry and how participating growers are paying less than 2 per cent of the cost of a case of produce."

 

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